-■•a! 



\1\ 
904 









'^Uim^' 









SNT CHARLES SUMNER HO 



SE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE 



At lO AKD tl 'tl 



















.•'.♦fc*.^ 




jc^^ I -b 





^■>^^^^K^^^m 




1^1 


^^^^^V*''' 








^^^^^^^^B^^^^B 


M 



INAUGURATION 

PRESIDENT CHARLES SUMNER HOWE 
CASE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE 

MAY 10 AND II 1904 



THE IMPERIAL PRESS CLEVELAND 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



INAUGURATION PROGRAM 
ADDRESS— MR. WARNER 
ADDRESS— PRESIDENT REMSEN 
ADDRESS— PRESIDENT PRITCHETT 
ADDRESS— MR. FREEMAN . 
ADDRESS— PRESIDENT THWING 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS— PRESIDENT HOWE 



PAGE 
7 
20 



23 
27 

33 

47 
51 



INAUGURATION 

PRESIDENT CHARLES SUMNER HOWE 

CASE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE 

CLEVELAND 

MAY lO AND II 1904 



PROGRAM OF THE EXERCISES 



CLEVELAND OHIO 
1904 



CASE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE 

Founded by Leonard Case, February 24, 1877 

Chartered, April 7, 1880 

Opened for Instruction, September 15, 1881 

PRESIDENTS 

Cady Staley, 1 886-1 902 

Charles Sumner Howe, actings 1 902-1 903 

Charles Sumner Howe, 1903- 



[7] 



TUESDAY, MAY THE TENTH 

In the evening, at eight o'clock, an Informal 
Reception will be given to the Delegates at The 
University Club, 692 Prospect Street 



[8] 



WEDNESDAY, MAY THE ELEVENTH 

At half past nine the Procession 
will form at the Main Building of 
Case School of Applied Science 
and move to the Euclid Avenue 
Congregational Church, where the 
Inauguration Exercises will be held 

ORDER OF THE PROCESSION 

Professor Frank Robertson Van Horn 
Chief Marshal 

FIRST DIVISION 

Stanton Irving Charlesworth, '04, Marshal 

The Undergraduates of Case School of Applied 
Science 

Senior Class, Albert Collinwood Hawley, Marshal 

Junior Class, Dwight Backus Ball, Marshal 

Sophomore Class, Hugh Davidson Pallister, Marshal 

Freshman Class, George Skinner Vail, Marshal 

SECOND DIVISION 

Professor Theodore M. Focke, Marshal 

The Trustees and The Faculty of Case School 

of Applied Science 

The Speakers at the Exercises 

THIRD DIVISION 
Professor Richard Gustavus Dukes, Marshal 

The Delegates and Official Guests 

FOURTH DIVISION 
Mr. Robert Hoffman, Class of 1893, Marshal 

The Alumni of Case School of Applied Science 

[9] 



WEDNESDAY, MAY THE ELEVENTH 

ORDER OF THE INAUGURATION 
EXERCISES 

President John M. Henderson of the Board of Trustees 
Presiding 

Processional, Inaugural March. Clarke 

Organ and Philharmonic Quartette. 

Music, Andante Cantabile. Tschaikowsky 

Philharmonic Quartette. 

Invocation. 

By President Henry Churchill King 
of Oberlin College. 

Address on behalf of the Trustees. 

By Mr. Worcester Reed Warner. 

Response. 

By President Howe. 

Music, Theme and Variations. Beethoven 

Philharmonic Quartette. 

Address on behalf of the Universities. 

By President Ira Remsen 

of Johns Hopkins University. 

Address on behalf of the Technical Schools. 

By President Henry Smith Pritchett 

of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Address on behalf of the Technical Societies. 

By Mr. John R. Freeman 

of The American Society of Mechanical En- 
gineers. 

Address on behalf of the Colleges of Ohio. 

By President Charles Franklin Thwing 
of The Western Reserve University. 

Music, Hungarian Dance. Hoffman 

Philharmonic Quartette. 

[10] 



WEDNESDAY, MAY THE ELEVENTH 

Inaugural Address, ''Does a Technical Course 
Educate?" 

By President Charles Sumner Howe. 

Song, "Messkunst." (Tune: Lauriger Horatius.) 

Staley 
By the Students of Case School of Applied Science. 

"O Messkunst, Zaum der Phantasie, 
Wer dir will folgen irret nie." 
Results precise our aim shall be, 
We keep our work from error free. 

Chorus: S-C-I-E-N-C-E. 

Ever let your motto be, 

O Messkunst, Zaum der Phantasie, 

Wer dir will folgen irret nie. 

O'er hill and dale our lines we trace. 

Each curve and tangent in its place. 

Our ref'rence marks upon Earth's face, 

Or points of light in endless space. 

Chorus: S-C-I-E-N-C-E, etc. 

We measure force as well as lines; 
Electric currents; wealth of mines; 
How bright the flame in splendor shines ; 
How atom with its mate combines. 

Chorus: S-C-I-E-N-C-E, etc. 

Benediction. 

By the Reverend Caspar Wistar Hiatt 

of the Euclid Avenue Congregational Church. 

Recessional, March from Athalia. Mendelssohn 
Organ and Philharmonic Quartette. 



The Audience will please remain in place until the procession 

has left the church. 

[11] 



WEDNESDAY, MAY THE ELEVENTH 

At one o'clock a luncheon will be served to the 
Delegates from other Institutions, and the Trus- 
tees, Faculty and Alumni of Case School of Ap- 
plied Science, in the Parlors of the Church. (Ad- 
mission by card.) 

From three to five o'clock the Laboratories 
and Shops of Case School of Applied Science will 
be open for the inspection of Delegates and friends 
of the Institution. Instructors will be in attend- 
ance at the President's office to conduct guests and 
explain points of interest. 

At three o'clock there will be a game of base- 
ball between Case and Adelbert on Case Field. 

At seven o'clock the Inauguration Banquet to 
the Delegates, Invited Guests, Trustees and Fac- 
ulty, will be given at the HoUenden. (Admission 
by card.) 

At half past eight o'clock an informal dance 
will be given in the Main Building to the Under- 
graduates, former Students and Alumni of Case 
School of Applied Science. 

[12] 



LIST OF DELEGATES 

DELEGATES FROM INSTITUTIONS 

Harvard University 

Frederick Adrian Delano, A. B. 

Yale University 

Sheffield Scientific School 

Professor Charles BrinkerhofiF Richards, M. A. 

University of Pennsylvania 

Professor Charles Leander Doolittle, C.E.,Sc. D. 

Columbia University 

The Schools of Applied Science 

Dean Frederick Remsen Hutton, E. M., Ph. D. 

Dartmouth College 

President William Jewett Tucker, D.D., LL. D. 

Western University of Pennsylvania 

Ex-Chancellor John A. Brashear, Sc. D., LL. D. 

University of Tennessee 

President Charles William Dabney, Ph. D., LL. D. 

Union College 

Professor Olin Henry Landreth, A. M., C. E. 

United States Military Academy 

Brigadier General George Armstrong Garretson, 
U. S. V. 

Miami University 

President Guy Potter Benton, A. M., D. D. 

Kenyon College 

President William Foster Pierce, A.M.,L.H.D. 

Western Reserve University 

President Charles Franklin Thwing,D.D.,LL.D. 
Adelbert College 

Prof. Edward Williams Morley, M. D., Ph. D., 
LL. D. 
The College for Women 

Professor Frank Perkins Whitman, A. M., D. Sc. 
The Dental College 

Dean Henry Lovejoy Ambler, M.S.,D.D.S.,M.D. 
The Medical College 

Professor Torald Sollman, M. D. 

[13] 



University of Toronto 

Ontario School of Practical Science 
Mr. Virgil G. Marani, C. E. 

McGill University 

Schools of Applied Science 

Professor C. H. McLeod, Ma. E., F. R. S. C. 

St. Louis University 

Professor Frederick L. Odenbach, S. J. 

Denison University 

Professor John Lord Gilpatrick, A. M., Ph. D. 

Oberlin College 

President Henry Churchill King, A. M., D. D. 
Professor Charles Edward St. John, Ph. D. 

Marietta College 

President Alfred Tyler Perry, M. A., D. D. 

Alfred University 

Pres. Booth Colwell Davis, A. M., Ph. D., D. D. 
Captain Russell E. Burdick. 

Mount Holyoke College 

President Mary Evans, A. M., LL. D., of Lake 
Erie College. 

University of Michigan 

President James Burrill Angell, LL. D. 

University of Missouri 

President Richard Henry Jesse, LL. D. 

Baldwin University 

Professor E. L. Fulmer, M. S. 

Wittenberg College 

Professor Alvin Frank Linn, A. M., Ph. D. 

Bucknell University 

President John Howard Harris, Ph. D., LL. D. 

Mt. Union College 

President Albert Burdsall Ricker, A. M., D. D. 
Professor Benjamin Franklin Yanney, A. M. 

Otterbein University 

Professor Louis H. McFadden, A. M. 

[U] 



University of Wisconsin 

President Charles RichardVanHise, M.S., Ph.D. 

College of Mechanics and Engineering 

Dean Frederick Eugene Turneaure, C. E. 

Geneva College 

President William Pollock Johnston,A.M.,D.D. 

University of Rochester 

Charles B. Parker, M. D. 

Hiram College 

Acting Pres. Edmund Burritt Wakefield, A. M. 
Professor George Henry Coulton, M. S., Ph. D. 

Northwestern University 

Pres. Edmund Janes James, Ph. D.,D.D.,LL.D. 

Washington University 

Chancellor Winfield Scott Chaplin,A.M.,LL.D. 

Lake Erie College 

President Mary Evans, A. M., LL. D. 
Dean Luette P. Bentley. 

Wheaton College 

President Charles A. Blanchard, D. D. 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

President Henry Smith Pritchett, Ph. D., LL. D. 

Lebanon Valley College 

President Hervin Ulysses Roop, A. M., Ph. D. 

Whitman College 

Professor Helen A. Pepoon, Ph. B., B. L. 

Carleton College 

Mr. James F. Jackson, B. S. 
University of Illinois 

College of Engineering 

Dean Nathan Clifford Ricker, D. Arch. 

University of Wooster 

Professor William Zebina Bennet, A. M., Ph. D. 

[ 15] 



University of California 

President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, Ph. D., LL. D. 
The Engineering Colleges 

Professor Arthur Starr Eakle, Ph. D. 

Iowa State College 

President Albert Boynton Storms, A. M., D. D. 
Ohio State University 

President William Oxley Thompson, D.D., 
LL. D. 
College of Engineering 

Dean Edward Orton, Jr., E. M. 

Syracuse University 

College of Applied Science 

Dean William Kent, A. M., M. E. 

Stevens Institute of Technology 

Mr. Edward Parkinson Roberts, M. E. 

University of Cincinnati 

President Howard Ayers, Ph. D., LL. D. 
College of Engineering 

Professor Christian William Marx, B. E. 

Buchtel College 

President A. B. Church, A. M., D. D. 
Professor Carl F. Kolbe, A. M., Ph. D. 
Professor Maria Parsons, A. M. 
Professor Charles M. Knight, A. M., Sc. D. 

Purdue University 

President Winthrop Ellsworth Stone, Ph. D. 

Rose Polytechnic Institute 

President Carl Leo Mees, Ph. D. 

Hebrew Union College 

Rabbi Moses J. Gries, B. L. 

Johns Hopkins University 

President Ira Remsen, M. D., Ph. D., LL. D. 

Brigham Young College 

President James H. Linford, D. B., B. S. 

[16] 



Carnegie Technical Schools 

Trustee John A. Brashear, Sc. D., LL. D. 
Director Arthur A. Hamerschlag. 

United States Naval Observatory 

Professor Aaron Nichols Skinner, U. S. N. 

United States Weather Bureau 

Professor Cleveland Abbe, Ph. D., LL. D. 

Lick Observatory 

Mr. Ambrose Swasey. 

FROM SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATIONS 

American Association for the Advancement of 
Science 

President Henry Smith Pritchett, Ph. D., LL. D. 

American Chemical Society 

Professor Albert Benjamin Prescott,M.D.,LL.D. 

American Institute of Electrical Engineers 

President Bion Joseph Arnold, M.S.,M. Ph., E.E. 

American Mathematical Society 

Professor Clarence Abiathar Waldo, Ph. D. 

American Society of Mechanical Engineers 

Mr. Ambrose Swasey. 
Mr. John R. Freeman. 

Association of Engineering Societies 

Mr. John R. Freeman. 

Astronomical and Astrophysical Society 

Professor Charles Leander Doolittle,C.E.,Sc.D. 
ProfessorEdward Williams Morley, M. D., LL. D. 

Civil Engineers' Club of Cleveland 

Mr. Ambrose Swasey. 

Cleveland Architectural Club 

Mr. William G. Watterson. 

Cleveland Chemical Society 

Professor Hyppolite Gruener, Ph. D. 

[17] 



Electric Club of Cleveland 

Mr. Charles William Wason. 

Electro-Chemical Society 

Mr. Alfred H. Cowles. 

Montana Society of Engineers 
Mr. Charles Metlicka. 

Royal Astronomical Society 

Professor Ernest William Brown, M. A., Sc. D. 

Western Society of Civil Engineers 

Past President H. E. Horton, C. E. 

American Chemical Society 

Professor William McPherson, M. Sc, Ph. D. 

FROM SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS 

Electrical World and Engineer 
Mr. George S. Davis. 

Engineering News 

Mr. F. E. Schmitt. 

Engineering Record 

Mr. George S. Davis. 



[18 



INAUGURATION COMMITTEES 

FOR THE TRUSTEES 

Mr. Worcester Reed Warner 
Mr. Eckstein Case 

FOR THE FACULTY 

Professor Charles H. Benjamin 
Professor Charles Frederick Mabery 

Professor Frank Mason Comstock 
Professor John Williams Langley 
Professor Arthur Silas Wright 



[19] 



ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE TRUSTEES 

BY MR. WORCESTER REED WARNER 

Mr. Chairmarij Guests of Case School, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

On behalf of the Trustees of Case School of Applied 
Science, it is my privilege to welcome you on this occasion. 

The work of the Institution began tv\^enty-three years ago, 
and has been carried on so quietly and modestly, in accordance 
with the character and disposition of the Founder, that a few 
facts relative to it may be of interest even to Cleveland citizens 
here this morning. 

Leonard Case, Jr., the Founder of this Institution, died in 
1880, at the age of 60 years. He did not bequeath his property 
for the endowment of this school, but conveyed it by deeds of 
trust while he was himself able to formulate the general plan 
to be carried out by the Trustees. The year following his 
death the School was opened, with six professors and sixteen 
students, in the Case homestead, and continued there till 1885, 
when the new building was ready for it on the Campus donated 
by generous citizens. 

Eighteen eighty-five was also notable by reason of the fact 
that in May of that year Mrs. Laura Kerr Axtel, of Painesville, 
deeded to the School, lands, the sale of which has realized over 
$200,000. This gift was supplemented by a bequest of $60,000, 
made known at the time of her death, in 1890. 

The growth and progress of the School have developed a 
continual need of new halls and laboratories. Two of these were 
completed in 1892, for the departments of Chemistry and Me- 
chanical Engineering, respectively. These were followed in 
1896 by the Electrical Laboratory. Such an equipment would 
seem adequate to the progress of any ordinary College, but 
Case School of Applied Science is not in that class, for the 
Department of Physics and the Department of Mining En- 
gineering have for a long time been knocking at the Trustees' 

[20] 



door, and when it was slightly held ajar they have pleadingly 
told their needs. 

It has been the policy of the Trustees, however, to defer 
building laboratories until the money to pay for them was 
provided. We have tried to have the business administration 
conducted on a business basis, and yet I fear that a single illus- 
tration of our financial management will lose us your com- 
mendation; still I will venture to mention it. During the 
year just closing for every dollar received from the students in 
payment for tuition, there has been re-expended for them three 
dollars. Do you consider this a good investment? We do; 
for it is qualifying young men to go out well equipped to do the 
world's best scientific work. 

In 1885, Cady Staley, Ph. D., was chosen the first Presi- 
dent of Case School of Applied Science. Though never inau- 
gurated, for sixteen years he remained the able head of the 
Institution, during which time its growth was remarkable, for at 
the time of his resignation in 1902, the faculty numbered 22 
and the student body 353. 

Selecting a College President is a work of no small re- 
sponsibility. The Trustees' Committee looked far and wide 
and received from interested friends the scholastic and execu- 
tive record of a score of available men, but all the time they 
kept in mind the Secretary of the Faculty, who was guiding the 
affairs of the College at home. 

One of the Committee remarked in my hearing that, "If 
we had secured a new President a year ago who had managed 
the College as well as the Secretary of the Faculty has con- 
ducted it, should we not have considered our choice singularly 
fortunate?" We decided this question in the affirmative, and 
then unanimously elected Charles Sumner Howe, to the Presi- 
dency of Case School of Applied Science. 

His administration begins under most favorable auspices, 
with a faculty of 30 earnest co-workers, a student body of more 
than 450 able, ambitious young men, and conditions of peculiar 
promise. 

For it now becomes my further and very pleasant duty to 

[21] 



announce that there are to be immediately added to Case School 
certain facilities for which, as has been said, there has been 
pressing demand, and which will add enormously to its working 
power and its proper equipment as an institution of technical 
learning. 

A Laboratory of Physics and a Laboratory of Mining 
Engineering are now being designed, and we expect to break 
ground for them in the early summer, and have them ready for 
use in September, one year and four months hence. 

The need of these buildings and their equipment was 
made known to a public-spirited citizen, who requested us to 
secure reliable estimates of their cost and report to him. Care- 
ful investigation made by President Howe and the architects 
showed that the two laboratories could be built and equipped 
for the sum of one hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars. 
It was so reported. In a few days President Howe received 
the announcement of an unconditional gift, from Mr. John D. 
Rockefeller, of two hundred thousand dollars for the purpose 
specified. 

President Howe, instead of formally presenting you a 
bunch of keys and a copy of the Charter, in the name of the 
Trustees of Case School of Applied Science, I hand over to you 
the government of this institution of learning. 

With so much both of promise and fulfillment at the outset, 
the Trustees yet pledge you their unabated efforts for the future, 
and bid you heart}^ welcome to that position of authority to 
which it has been their pleasure to elect you in the certain as- 
surance that 5^ou will faithfully maintain and steadily advance 
the honor and prestige of Case School of Applied Science. 

RESPONSE BY PRESIDENT HOWE 

Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees: With a deep 
sense of the honor you have conferred upon me and with some 
knowledge of the duties and responsibilities of the position, I 
accept the office to which you have elected me and will do all 
in my power to promote the welfare of Case School of Applied 
Science. 

[22] 



ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE UNI- 
VERSITIES 

BY PRESroENT IRA REMSEX OF JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 

Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I bring from the Johns Hopkins University cordial greet- 
ings and hearty congratulations. Perhaps these greetings are a 
little more cordial for the reason that we claim a certain re- 
lationship to the gentleman who is made President of the Case 
School of Applied Science today. I do not know exactly what 
the relationship is. but whatever it is we claim it. I don't know 
that we can call him our son — I don't like to call him our step- 
son, but I repeat, he is related to us, and we claim that rela- 
tionship. 

The task which has been assigned to me, as you observe, is 
to give an address on behalf of the universities. It may interest 
you to know that I was not originally selected to give this ad- 
dress. I will not, however, go into secrets. Possibly some of 
you are familiar with this particular secret, especially as a pre- 
liminary program was printed with another name in place of 
mine, and I have that program in my pocket. I know that if the 
gentleman whose name was in the place of mine originally were 
before you you would get a very good address. 

The task which has been assigned to me is not a simple 
one — but that is a hackneyed phrase. I am to give an address, 
a brief one, I assure you, on behalf of the universities. That 
raises the question. What is a University? The answer may 
be given in terms something like those of the well known 
answer to the question "Is life worth living?" You remember 
the famous answer that was given to that question was "It de-. 
pends upon the liver." (Laughter.) In somewhat the same 
way I can answer the question "What is a university?" It de- 
pends upon the universit^^ For universities differ among one 
another in glory very markedly. It is a geographical question. 

[23] 



The meaning of the word depends upon where you live, what 
kind of a university you are connected with. The term uni- 
versity covers a multitude of — forms of activity (laughter), 
generally supposed to be intellectual, and to some extent they 
no doubt are. Still, whatever a university may be, I suppose 
that the word conveys some general idea in regard to the nature 
of the institution to which it is applied. I think that possibly 
the nearest we can get to the truth is this, that it stands for 
research in a very definite way, for investigation into nature and 
into everything else — research, investigation, an effort to find 
out the truth, whatever it may be, in whatever direction one 
may be looking or working. And that, without reference to any 
practical application or any application whatever that may be 
made of the results of such investigations. I take that to be 
the basis for the existence of a universit}^ the reason for its be- 
ing. A university is a place in which the methods and spirit of 
investigation are taught and inculcated. 

Now, if that is correct, then plainly there is primarily some 
difference between a university and a school of applied science, 
of which we have such a conspicuous example in the school 
whose guests we are today. I do not, however, wish to em- 
phasize that difference. I call attention to it merely for the sake 
of pointing out what I believe to be a tendency of the present 
time. That is a tendency to obliterate the difference that origi- 
nally existed, and still exists to some extent, between the work of 
a university and the work of a school of applied science. It has 
been said, you know, that a university is a place where nothing 
useful is taught. Well, I am willing to stand by that definition, 
however damaging it may appear. But I claim the right to de- 
fine the word useful. That is the crux of the matter. On the 
other hand, generally speaking, everything taught in a school 
of applied science is useful. The work is directly useful. It 
affects our daily lives at every turn, and the main object is to 
teach those things, to develop those subjects, that are directly 
useful in the occupations in which mankind is generally en- 
gaged. 

If, now, I have correctly characterized the tendencies of the 

[24] 



university on the one hand and of the school of applied science on 
the other, how is it possible for them ever to come together? We 
find that in Germany technical work is being done in universi- 
ties where a quarter of a century ago it would not have been 
countenanced. More and more universities are taking up that 
kind of work, and if we can venture to look far enough into 
the future we can almost see the time when the university and 
the technical school — the university with its useless work, or 
work that is not useful in the ordinary sense, and the school 
of applied science or the polytechnic with its useful work — 
will come very near to being identical. They may be said to 
be running parallel at present. Whether parallel lines are what 
they used to be in the days of my youth I am not quite sure. I 
have some suspicion that I have heard from a distinguished math- 
ematician that they are not. That is to say, the simple definition, 
that which really seems to mean something to most of us — 
that parallel lines are two lines that never meet no matter how 
far they extend, is not true. They go out into infinity and per- 
haps they meet there, and then they come back again. We need 
not bother about that, for the figu're ceases to work at that 
point. The meeting is the important thing. Whether there 
is some such relation between the school of applied science and 
the university I cannot tell. Whether they will ever meet it is 
impossible for us to say. But they are tending together. 

The tendency to which I refer is a real one, and it is due, 
I think, to two causes. In the first place, I am inclined to 
think that the universities are becoming more practical; and in 
the second place I think the scientific schools are becoming more 
scientific. If these two movements are kept up long enough, 
the two types of institutions are bound to come together. You 
will find in the scientific subjects, particularly in the subjects 
especially taught in the scientific schools, that the professors are 
doing the same kind of work in general that the professors in 
the universities are doing. They are doing work that is not 
useful, if I may be allowed to comment upon the work of some 
of my colleagues in the scientific schools, not useful in the sense 
in which the word is ordinarily used, but highly useful if looked 

[25] 



at from a higher point of view. And such work which is now 
playing an important part in the polytechnic schools of Germany 
is coming to play a more and more important part in the schools 
of applied science. The result is that the work of the polytech- 
nic and scientific schools, especially in chemistry and physics, is 
of about the same order as in the universities. We find, in 
Germany especially, that the professors in these subjects are 
interchangeable. The professors of polytechnic schools are being 
called to universities, and sometimes calls are given in the op- 
posite direction. The same man answers for either position, 
showing that the character of work done in some subjects in the 
two classes of schools is about the same. 

I want you to note this tendency on the part of these two 
types of institutions to come closer and closer together. What 
will happen in the future it is impossible to say. That we shall 
always have to deal with the applications of science, that these 
will always be of great importance to mankind, is certain. Some 
doubt the value of the ideal, of that which is not useful, of the 
search after truth without reference to its practical uses. But 
no one doubts the value of the applications of science. The ma- 
terial progress of mankind bears constant testimony to the value 
of this kind of work. Among the schools that are engaged in it 
we all know that your school. Case School of Applied Science — 
an excellent name, by the way, — "School of Applied Science" — 
that this school is doing its part nobly, and as a representative 
of the universities, speaking in their behalf, I express the hope 
that under the guidance of your new President this school may 
go on to still greater usefulness, and become even more famous 
than it now is. (Applause.) 



[26] 



SHALL ENGINEERING BELONG TO THE 
LIBERAL PROFESSIONS? 

ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE TECHNICAL SCHOOLS, BY PRESI- 
DENT HENRY SMITH PRITCHETT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS 
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 

Let me convey to you at this auspicious moment of the 
history of your School the message of good will of the Institu- 
tion of Technolog5^ All institutions today are more knit to- 
gether than ever before by bonds of common sympathy and com- 
mon aspirations. In your growth and in your success, we of the 
Institute of Technology recognize a larger service to the same 
country and the same cause which we serve. 

We congratulate you in the choice of a leader, who brings- 
to your service strength and courage and knowledge, for how- 
ever the world may progress, how farsoever institutions may 
perfect their organization, there will never be less need of 
efficient leadership. Institutions do not lead; men lead. We 
congratulate you on the man whom you have called. 

Let me say, too, one word of greeting on the part of the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, whose 
President, Dr. Carroll D. Wright, is unable to be with you 
today, and who has been good enough to ask me to represent 
him and the Association on this occasion. It is fit that the 
largest and most representative of American Scientific Societies 
should send its greetings to an American School of Applied 
Science, if for no other reason, to remind you that the ultimate 
purpose of science no less than the ultimate purpose of law, or 
of medicine, or of religion, is to contribute to the happiness and 
comfort and spiritual progress of man. We endow the older 
professions of the law, of medicine, of theology with the posses- 
sion of a certain altruistic attitude toward mankind. Is there any 
reason why the Engineer should not have a similar ideal ? And 
if this altruistic motive does not find a place in the ideal of the 

[27] 



Engineer, is it not probable that his profession will lack some- 
thing of the power of all liberal professions ? 

The Engineer, in the true sense, is a solver of practical 
problems. To fit him for this he needs technical knowledge 
and usually a formal technical training; but the real test of his 
ability as an engineer is found in the success with which he 
attacks engineering problems, judging that success by the 
needs of the problem and the circumstances which surround it. 
A solution which has no regard to environment and cost is not a 
real solution. 

I remember, years ago, on one of the railroads leading out 
of St. Louis, an old superintendent of track who was an engineer 
in this sense. He was hard handed, hard headed, had grown 
up on the road and lacked formal training, but he had a mar- 
velous power of adapting the means at hand to the solution of 
the problem set before him. On one occasion, a bridge had 
been washed away on the main line. It was at a time when 
traffic was heavy. The general manager strained every nerve, 
particularly the nerves of other people, to repair the damage. 
A force of men was hurried to the spot, the division engineer — 
a newly imported college graduate — set up a drafting office in 
the adjoining station, and every effort was made to get trains 
running at the earliest possible moment. Three days after the 
accident, the general manager came down to the scene of work, 
in his private car. Dismounting a few hundred yards from the 
bridge, he walked down the track in the early morning, and 
the first man he met was the old superintendent of track. 
"John," said he, "this bridge must be got up at the earliest 
moment. Have you seen the engineer and got his drawings for 
the new^ structure?" "Colonel," said the old man (and I have 
noticed that all railway managers are colonels — ^whether born so 
or made colonels when they are made railway managers, I do 
not know), "Colonel," said the old track man, "I do not know 
whether the engineer has got the picture d rawed yet or not, 
but the bridge is up and the trains are passing." In this case 
the real engineer was he who solved the problem adequately, 
successfully, efficiently, with the means in hand. 

[28] 



If this view of the engineering profession be granted, it 
goes without saying that the engineer must be a specialist. The 
tools with which he works are too vast and too complicated to be 
learned without special training and special study. Whether he 
begin that training in the school of engineering or whether 
he begin it in the harder school of experience, he must acquire 
the technique of his profession. The question I wish to ask — 
and it is a particularly interesting question at this phase of our 
national development — is, shall the engineer, specialist though he 
must be, belong also to the ranks of the liberally educated ? 

Perhaps it is not so easy to say what constitutes a liberal 
education, because education consists of so many factors drawn 
from so many sources; but a liberal profession is one in which 
those belonging to it know enough of outside professions and of 
general human knowledge to respect and to appreciate the work 
of other men, and the practical question in the education of the 
engineer is, shall he have such an education as will give him this 
respect for and this appreciation of other professions and of 
other men? 

It seems to me worth while calling attention to this matter, 
on such an occasion as this and at such a time, for two reasons. 
First of all, the demands upon the engineer today are very dif- 
ferent from those of twenty years ago, not only on the technical 
side, but also upon the side of the greater appreciation of other 
men's work and other men's professions. The engineer today is 
no longer a mere specialist; he is also the executive officer, the 
manager, the agent, the director of great business enterprises. 
And secondly, the inquiry is made at this moment because, in 
the enormous development of engineering in the last fifteen years, 
our engineering schools have been under the pressure of trying 
to deal, in a limited time, with a constantly growing number 
of subjects, and under this pressure there is felt everywhere a 
disposition to omit from the engineering courses of our schools 
and colleges whatever does not minister directly to the technique 
of the profession. 

The boy who comes up from the high school to enter the 
college or the technical school, whether he is to be lawyer or 

[29] 



doctor or preacher or engineer, is, on the average, about nineteen 
years old. If he aspires to any one of the three first named 
professions, he expects to spend from three to four years in 
college, and then again from three to four years in his profes- 
sional school. He begins his profession at the age of twenty- 
six or twenty-eight years, and after an education which is in- 
tended not only to fit him as a specialist but to fit him for mem- 
bership in a liberal profession. The engineer, on the contrary, 
as a rule expects, within the four years succeeding his nineteenth 
birthday, to obtain the rudiments of a general education and 
the training for his engineering specialt}^ He enters his pro- 
fession at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four, some three 
or four years younger than the lawyer or the doctor or the 
preacher. He has the advantage of going into the world at a 
time when he is more resilient and quicker to learn, and he has 
three years the start of the doctor in the practice of his profes- 
sion. But will the engineering profession, under such a system 
of education, continue to be one of the liberal professions? Will 
the members of it have that touch with men of other professions, 
that respect for their work, which liberally educated men ought 
to have, and without which a profession, however highly trained, 
ceases to exercise that moral and social influence which an ed- 
ucated body of men ought to have? Isolation in this world, 
whether it be of men or of professions, means loss of moral 
power and decrease in moral and intellectual influence. 

It is true, as every one knows, that a growing number of 
men are coming into the engineering school, after graduation in 
the college, and it is worth while to note that these men find the 
work of the engineering school no less worthy of their metal than 
the work of the medical school or of the law school. But it is also 
true that this number bears a small proportion to the great rank 
of men in the profession, and will always do so until, in a few 
of the leading schools at least, there is demanded a preparation 
similar to that asked for in the other liberal professions. 

It is also worth remembering that on the Continent of 
Europe the requirements for the education of the engineer are 
quite similar to those expected of other liberal professions. The 

[30] 



man who enters the German technical school has received an 
education, somewhat different to be sure from that of the man 
who enters the university, but one quite as broadening in its 
influence and requiring quite as long a time for its acquisition. 
Forty years ago, or such a matter, when we began the building 
up of engineering schools in this country, it was in response to 
a pressing demand for engineers. Immediately after the war en- 
gineering schools broke out at a dozen different points. We were 
developing a new country at an unprecedented rate, and in a way 
never before attempted. A people who for four years had given 
all their energies to war, suddenly turned them with a similar en- 
thusiasm to the physical development of the country, and schools 
were adapted to answer this demand as rapidly as possible. That 
day has in a measure passed by. There is time now to consider 
the plans for preparing the engineer, not only from the utilitarian 
but from the educational standpoint as well. 

This occasion is not the fitting one for the discussion of 
such a question. When we meet at such a gathering it is 
rather to take a general survey of the field, than to map out 
its details. I can do no more than suggest the inquiry which 
confronts us, and to call attention to the fact that it does ac- 
tually confront us. 

The inquiry presents itself to my mind in somewhat the 
following form. During the forty years in which our engineer- 
ing courses have been developed, there has been an enormous 
differentiation of engineering theory and practice. Under this 
process the pressure to make instruction in the engineering 
school more and more technical has grown constantly greater, 
and there has been the inevitable tendency to reduce the amount 
of time given to general subjects, as english, economics, modern 
languages and literature. The tendency of such a development 
is to make the engineering school contribute to instruction 
rather than to education and its outcome is toward a profession 
more technical and less liberal. It is clearly becoming more 
and more diflScult to give to a student in four years the elements 
of a liberal education and the technical training of the specialist. 
If the ideal of the liberal education is to be preserved to the en- 

[31 ] 



gineer, it seems to me that either the technical school must 
lengthen its term of study or some friendly compromise with the 
college must be made, under which the engineering student 
may obtain in it the preparation in general education without 
too great an expenditure of time, and thus leave the technical 
school free to deal with the education of the engineer from the 
purely professional standpoint. 

We are standing today at one of the important epochs in 
our educational historj^, and my purpose is not so much to indi- 
cate a solution of this question, as to point out the fact that the 
question actually confronts us, and to urge that we take up 
in the most serious and reasonable spirit the inquiry how to ed- 
ucate the engineer, with a view of giving him the maximum 
efficiency as an expert, while preserving to him the fundamental 
qualities of the liberally educated man. 

It seems to me that here in the Case School you have a 
unique opportunity to contribute to this solution. Here side 
by side on the same campus stand an Engineering School and 
a University, each under its own board of control; each sym- 
pathizing as the spirit and needs of the time may require, and 
yet so actuated by ties of daily life and friendly association as 
to make possible an unusual cooperation in a difficult and far- 
reaching problem. Let me suggest that the Case School of 
Applied Science and the Western Reserve University can serve 
no higher purpose in education than by a friendly cooperation 
in solving the question, "How should the Engineer be edu- 
cated so as to give him the highest value as a solver of practical 
problems and to make him at the same time the member of a 
liberal profession?" 



[32] 



ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE TECH- 
NICAL SOCIETIES. 

BY MR. JOHN R. FREEMAN^* VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN 
SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS. 

Mr. President: 

As a delegate on behalf of our Engineering Societies, I 
must explain that these also are Schools of Applied Science. 
They are the more attractive to students, in that they hold no 
examinations; all studies are elective and voluntary; one recites 
only when he feels like it ; and the social element is preeminent. 

Into this university of the Engineering Societies we hope to 
receive all of your graduates and to retain them as fellow- 
students and warm friends to the end of their lives. 

APPRECIATION OF THE TECHNICAL SCHOOL 

In speaking on behalf of the engineering profession, my 
first words must acknowledge our great debt to the technical 
school and that this debt is increasing from year to year. Our 
members are coming to be recruited in an ever increasing pro- 
portion from the technical graduates. 

From the researches conducted in your laboratories, we ob- 
tain much of our most valuable engineering data. 

Our best books of reference for the practicing engineer are 
nearly all prepared by the professors in these technical schools. 

The strongest foundation for a country's future industrial 
and commercial welfare is to be found in Schools of Applied 
Science, well equipped, guided by men of broad mental horizon. 
This is scantily appreciated as yet by the mass of strenuous 
Americans, but has long been clearly seen by the Germans, and 
is beginning to be seen by the English. 

The cost of duplicating the land, buildings, equipment and 
the endowment of the largest and most complete technical 

*Delegate representing the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 
and the Association of Engineering Societies. 

[33 1 



school in the United States is only about half the cost of one 
of the latest battleships, and the running expenses per year of 
a technical school training 1,500 young men are about the same 
at those for keeping a single battleship in commission. The 
Technical School has a use no less important than the battle- 
ship in the "first line of National defence." 

In the re-awakening of the old spirit of commercial adven- 
ture in foreign lands, we must today base our hope of success 
on superior excellence and economy of manufacture and in the 
calling of our engineers to foreign lands. 

The growth of our cities is laying a burden of new and 
larger problems on our departments of public works, a burden 
which only those trained in the Schools of Applied Science can 
carry wisely and well. 

The business man when he comes to see these matters 
clearly will urge again and again a generous support to Schools 
of Applied Science by city, state and nation when private 
munificence falls short. 

These schools need, as managers, the strongest men that can 
be found, the men of broadest horizon, the men that can arouse 
the noble ambitions of young men toward advancing the state 
of an art and that can impart the spirit of joy in work. 

APPRECIATION OF THE TECHNICAL GRADUATE 

For twenty-five years I have been observing the increasing 
respect paid by our industrial leaders to the training gained in 
the technical school. The technical graduate himself has come 
to better understand his own limitations, and his need of a 
course outside, under instruction from the foreman and the me- 
chanic. The man of business is coming to understand that fhere 
are "firsts," "seconds" and "thirds" produced, that some excel 
in judgment and some in skill, and that it is not the mere fact of 
being a technical graduate that brings success, but that given in- 
born executive ability, the training of college or technical school 
gives to its graduate a tremendous advantage over the man of 
equal native force who has not this training. 

Twenty-eight years ago the finding of openings by my own 

[34] 



f 



fellow graduates was difficult and slow, — not a third of our 
men found openings of fair promise within the first six months ; 
the average "captain of industry" did not then know just what 
a technical graduate was, or what he was good for. 

We then listened to prophecies that the annual output of 
engineering graduates would soon overstock the market. Today, 
notwithstanding that during the past quarter of a century 
technical schools have multiplied on every side and that classes 
in many of the older ones have increased fourfold, the output 
is quickly absorbed. The department head in one of our largest 
technical schools has told me repeatedly that in each recent 
year he has applications from managers of important works for 
double the number of his graduates, and it is said that certain 
large and progressive concerns send an agent around the 
schools in January to select from the brightest of those who are 
to graduate in June. 

The mere register of the occupation of the graduates from 
any leading School of Applied Science is a most eloquent com- 
mentary on the commanding influence of these schools. 

Twenty-five years ago among managers of works I heard 
much about the good practical man and his superiority to the 
theoretical college graduate; today it is coming to be generally 
recognized that the good practical man is the one who has 
graduated from a technical school and who has then been sea- 
soned by a few years of experience in bumping against the hard 
corners of construction, and the technical graduate of proved 
business ability is in special demand. 

The Technical School, the School of Mechanic Arts, and 
the Mechanics Correspondence School, each has its special and 
distinct value in our industrial life. We should make the tech- 
nical school attractive to the brightest minds and should look 
to it for our industrial and commercial leaders, and for the best 
custodians of the public health, of our water supplies and other 
public works. 

In order to get the most out of the existing technical schools 
let us keep in mind the limitations within which they can do 
their most efficient work, and the fact that not every kind of 

[35] 



work will be best done by a technical graduate. The students 
found without promise of final success should in all kindness 
be allowed to depart and not hold back the rest. 

- Doubtless a man ma}' give lines and grades as well, may 
drive an engine or detail steel work better, if his four years of 
early manhood have been spent gaining this dexterity and skill 
outside the technical school. The late Col. T. J. Borden, a 
sympathetic, thoughtful man of forty years' experience as man- 
ager of large industrial works, and himself a technical grad- 
uate, told me that for m.any 3-ears he had been observing that a 
faithful uneducated laborer would in general keep a more cor- 
rect tally sheet of the unloading of a cargo than the bright high 
school graduate whose thoughts were fl5^ing off to other things ; 
that a large f actor}" engine would be run with better attention 
and fewer breakdowns by a graduated stoker or oiler than by 
an expert machinist, who was liable to be scheming out improve- 
ments and to have his mind busy with something other than 
the mere operation of this machine; that often the best routine 
work was done by a man who was not capable of anything very- 
much better. 

The young man who is to follow a narrow routine through 
life will not have much added to his efficiency as a machine, by 
the long elaborate course of the technical school. For those 
constitutionally deficient in ambition, or for those unfortunates 
who can ne\er comprehend the art of getting on in the world, 
these four extra 3'ears are illspent at school, but there are 
plenty of young men for whom this training of the technical 
school is the best possible training and there is plent}^ of op- 
portunity for a larger number of these men than all of our 
present schools can graduate. 

Men cannot be shaped on the interchangeable system of 
American Machine Shop, — each will be a "special" and, as al- 
ready remarked, there will be produced "firsts," "seconds" and 
"thirds," but fortunately the demand for all types and grades 
exceeds the possible supply for years to come. 

Among the graduates some will possess that rare faculty for 
which "initiative" is the phrase of the day, and among these 

136] 



there will be some who will possess that quality of balance and 
judgment, and attain such knowledge of men, that they will 
become great leaders, the captains, will establish their own in- 
dustrial works, or be called to the $10,000 positions which are 
always so hard to fill right. Others, without this business in- 
sight, but perhaps more learned and more skillful in engineering, 
will design machines and bridges, supervise factories, become the 
lieutenants and fill the $4,000 and the $2,000 positions, and a 
still larger number will do noble work as the sergeants, corporals 
and privates and be made better men by the broadening of their 
minds in their college course. 

The training of no school can make the square peg fit easy 
in the round hole, and, out of a hundred boys, but few are born 
with the ear of a musician or the eye of an artist, or with the 
observing, inquiring, ingenious, imaginative mind, which schools 
can stimulate but cannot create, and without which conspicuous 
success in constructive engineering is impossible. But for the 
young man so fitted by nature, a technical school of broad 
scope and high aim is a royal road. 

A ROYAL ROAD 

The old statement that "There is no royal road to learn- 
ing" is untrue. The man of affairs has come to understand that 
the technical school is a royal road to learning, — a shorter road, 
an easier road, through a more beautiful landscape, and in equal 
time attaining a broader outlook. 

A man with the earnestness and patience of John Brashier, 
the strong purpose of John C. Hoadley, the rugged common 
sense of Edwin Reynolds, the strong, kindly heart and quick in- 
telligence of John Fritz, or the genius of Edison, may reach 
an equal height by a longer and more arduous road and, like the 
athlete, increase his strength and harden his endurance in the 
greater effort, but the royal road of the technical school, in its 
four years, may from its small group, gathered part by chance 
and part by process of natural selection from more than ten 
thousand school boys, bring perhaps ten to the point that other- 
wise not more than one or two or three could hope to reach in 
twice these four years. 

[37] 



The technical school is not exclusively for the brilliant 
man. Much of the world's best work is done by the man of slow 
moving intellect, to whom the good Lord has given the greater 
treasure of persistence, of steadfastness, with enough imagina- 
tion or instinct to feel what is concealed within the cloud on 
yonder difficult and distant hill. 

There is danger in relying upon lectures and reading for 
teaching and upon written examinations for measuring up a 
student and his fitness to continue on his four years' course, and 
one of the greatest advantages of the technical school is found in 
its laboratory method, for the reason that the personal, individual 
contact with the student daily in the laboratory gives an op- 
portunity for helping the one who is slow to develop himself. 

I have had perhaps twenty graduates tell me in familiar 
talk that the most helpful man to them of all the technology 
professors was the lamented Holman. Why? First, because 
he was intellectually a great and noble man, and second, because 
he took pains to get acquainted with them and their individual 
needs in the laboratory. 

The ablest professors in the staff should be brought into 
earliest possible contact with the freshman in the laboratory. 

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE TECHNICAL GRADUATE 

For a few moments past we have been considering the 
broader appreciation by men of affairs for the work of the 
technical school; let us for a moment review the causes of its 
great opportunity. 

That the manufacture of power was the mainspring of the 
onward movement of the nineteenth century was made plain, 
perhaps more lucidly than ever before, by that great engineer, 
whose recent loss we mourn, George H. Morison, in his Phi 
Beta Kappa address at Harvard in 1895. 

In the skillful application of manufactured power lies the 
great opportunity of the engineer. 

The distribution and use of manufactured power are in- 
creasing by leaps and bounds in a way that few of us can see in 
perspective. 

[38] 



It moves a thousand cotton spindles guided by a single 
hand, with the power of more than a thousand horses it draws 
your 20th century express, large cotton factories in Montreal 
are driven by a waterfall nearly a hundred miles away, the 
power of Niagara rends the strongest chemical affinities. The 
chariot, as made in Cleveland, is horseless, but it is propelled by 
the power of 24 horses, all generated in a little space, and de- 
rived from a harnessed explosion. In another part of your city, 
the most delicate and accurate engraving that the skill of the 
world has known, an astronomers' circle with markings correct 
within less than a second of an arc, may go on in solitude as a 
result of a laborer shoveling coal under a steam boiler. Our 
early manufacturer sought the power of great rivers. Today 
there is far more steam power used in Lowell than water power, 
and in your city of Cleveland, the power manufactured from 
coal far exceeds that of the greatest single development of water 
power in the world, Niagara not excepted. The General Electric 
Co. had on its books on January 31, 1904, undelivered orders for 
steam turbines of an aggregate power of three hundred and 
fifty thousand horse power, an amount nearly three times as 
great as the present total generation of power from Niagara 
and nearly half as great as the total water and steam power 
combined, in the six New England States, found in the census of 
1880. 

With the aid of unlimited power, work is performed in a 
larger way and with greater rush, and with this comes the 
greater need of executive ability, of captains and corporals of 
systematic, observing habit, equipped with the tools and train- 
ing of the technical school. 

This is a transition period and never was there such op- 
portunity for the trained engineer. Mechanical production 
must supply the natural increase due to the growth in popula- 
tion and replace machines worn out by service and must re- 
place even new machines by something newer. Here in Cleve- 
land, your horse cars were not worn out when the cable car 
replaced them, your cable railways were not worn out when 

[39] 



the electric car came in. Not only the equipment but the shop 
that makes it must largely go into scrap. 

Two or three years ago, one of the leading engine builders 
of the world began on new shops in a city on the Great Lakes, 
the largest of their kind, designed for building engines of the 
most massive type. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were ex- 
pended on these shops and their heavy machine tools, but before 
these shops were occupied customers were inquiring not for 
engines but for steam turbines. 

The leading pump builder of America began two years 
ago on new shops near New York, these also to be the largest 
in the world ; the plans had been matured by years of study, for 
building pumping engines of the ordinary reciprocating type. 
Before these shops are ready for occupancy, the old and simple 
and inefficient type of centrifugal pump is suddenly so improved 
as to threaten a revolution which may profoundly change the 
type of shop equipment demanded. 

A maker of valves and fittings, a concern which had kept 
steadily up-to-date for more than a quarter of a century, started 
about tw^o years ago to supply its expanding trade by a factory 
on the shores of Long Island Sound, designed to employ at 
first 2,000 and later 4,000 men. The plans were matured with 
rare care and judgment. First, their man of greatest skill in 
shop methods plans for his various machines and lays out his 
floor space. Next the skilled mill engineer makes plans to 
house that floor space in. Next an architect of national repu- 
tation for his inborn sense of beautiful form and graceful line, 
models the outlines of exterior wall and windows and roof. 
Machine tools of latest design had been purchased, apparently 
everything had been provided for, when, just as the roofs are 
on, the successful demonstration of a new kind of tool steel, 
which permits of far deeper and more rapid cuts, calls a halt 
and requires radical change. 

All this is recent and the end is not in sight. 

Not long ago I had a letter from a fine old gentleman of 
Boston, himself in his day and generation probably the best 
educated engineer in America — and whose engineering work 

[40] 



began under the great Stephenson on the construction of the 
earliest steam railroad of the world, in which letter that man 
who had seen the railroad born, and the telegraph and the 
electrical powers and a thousand other engineering marvels, 
spoke of the broader opportunity of discovery for the engineers 
of today! 

Seventy-five years ago when Cleveland was a frontier vil- 
lage, within the memory of a few men now living, the dry 
dock in the Boston Navy Yard was the most monumental piece 
of engineering construction and the greatest single work of 
internal improvement yet completed within the United States, 
and the total manufactured power in the United States did not 
exceed the output of one of the large power stations of today. 

It is only forty years since the first distinctive general School 
of Applied Science or Institute of Technology in this country 
began after years of patient explanation and pleading, by that 
lovable, eloquent, prophetic, noble man of science, William Bar- 
ton Rogers, and how profoundly it has influenced the whole 
course of higher education. 

Although the lines of work formerly recognized as en- 
gineering may be crowded, there are on every side unworked 
fields in which the trained engineer possessing business ability, 
be he builder, sanitarian, chemist, machinist, or electrician, can 
introduce system, discover causes, lessen cost and improve the 
product and find for himself a competency and joy in work. 

What we need especially in the output from the technical 
schools is young men who have the ability to handle men, who 
know something of human nature as well as the nature of the 
other materials of engineering. 

A PLEA FOR THE BREADTH OF CULTURE IN THE SCHOOL 

The other speakers today are presidents of colleges, edu- 
cators of wide experience and national reputation, and it savors 
of rashness for me in their presence to venture opinions upon the 
aims and methods of a technical school ; but during my twenty- 
five years of taking on technical graduates in almost every 
year and trying through them to keep in touch with the schools, 

[41] 



I have often found what has seemed to me a misapprehension 
among students, friends and patrons of technical schools, that 
to an audience of friends and patrons a few words from the 
standpoint of a business man and practicing engineer may have 
some interest. 

Why do we not find the greatest prizes of the industrial 
works and of civic administration going more often to the tech- 
nical graduate? Why does the commercial department pay 
better salaries than the engineering department? We have all 
seen plenty of examples that prove that technical training is of 
itself an aid rather than a bar to commercial success. 

Have our men got too narrow a training in the Technical 
School? 

Within the past week I have chanced to hear two heads 
of great concerns each employing many scientific men, say in 
substance that the old academic education fits better for the 
position where one deals with men, or for the $10,000 position, 
while the technical school fits better for the position that deals 
with materials or for the $4,000 position, and I note that sons 
of my old classmates are being sent first to Harvard or Yale 
or Dartmouth for four years and then to "Technology" for a 
two years' course in science. 

Six years time, — from 18 to 24, — is more than the average 
young man can afford to spend at school. It brings him into 
the works too late. When we more fully appreciate that edu- 
cation^ rather than information, is the true aim of the technical 
school, then a broad education and sufficient information can 
both be given in a four years' course. 

Can we not give a better education to the great majority 
of our students and plant in them thirst for information by 
doing fewer things more profoundly and putting more emphasis 
on the personal element ? 

Is not the one great captain of science or industry like 
Pasteur, Kelvin, Ericsson, Bessemer, Westinghouse, Mills, 
Brush, or Alexander Brown, and a hundred others, worth more 
to his country and his neighborhood than a room-full of the 

[42] 



very necessary and useful sergeants and corporals of science 
and industry? 

Cannot our school do the most good and best serve all, and 
best stimulate the ambition of all, by trying to fit men for the 
position of captains; and if the man skilled in the applications 
of science, — has also executive skill and such knowledge of men 
that he can negotiate, convince and arouse men, will not he 
have a wider opportunity to do good and to advance the state 
of that art and the public welfare ; and shall we not by address- 
ing our teaching to the highest grade thus produce more of the 
$io,OCKD men and at the same time better $4,000 men? 

In separating students into many courses, is there not 
danger of splitting things too fine? Have we not gone too far 
in specializing for the undergraduate? 

It is a matter of slight importance to the machine builder 
whether he takes the course in Mechanical Engineering, Civil 
Engineering, or general physics, if he is fortunate in his teacher. 

The chief function of the Technical School is not the filling 
of a man's memory with formulas and with knowledge of how 
everything is made, but rather is the training in methods of 
thoughtful research, of teaching how to put the question and 
where and how to find the answer, of how to set traps for his 
own unconscious errors, how to save time by understanding just 
what degree of precision is necessary to the case in hand, how to 
measure with certainty the limits of the ever-present error and 
above all to develop and strengthen a warm, enthusiastic, un- 
deviating love for the truth. 

In my own college days, I did not have it made plain, and I 
failed to grasp the fact that perhaps the greatest opportunity of 
college life is that of coming to better know one's fellowmen, 
and it is in failure to appreciate this more than in any other 
one feature that the professional school has failed in comparison 
with the older colleges. In the protest against the old edu- 
cation, exemplified in the early development of the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology and other similar schools, the 
pendulum swung beyond the center and the value of the social 
idea was for a time not appreciated, and to many of us there 

[43] 



was lost the inspiration and broadening, the deeper understand- 
ing of humanity that may come from entering into the daily life 
of the ancient civilizations enough to understand that human 
nature is much the same through three thousand years. We 
missed that focusing and sharpening of the wits which comes 
from taking time for the discussion of current events with our 
fellows. 

One of our professors read to his class Holmes' verses on 
the Deacon's Masterpiece, "equally strong in every part," as 
typifying the ideal machine. McAndrew's hymn may teach a 
deeper lesson. The young man should be led to find inspiration 
in his machinery, while in the Technical School. 

A few weeks ago in Chicago, I sat beside a classmate, a 
former "grind," noM^ a successful man of business, at a gather- 
ing of the graduates of one of our largest technical schools. 
Said he, — "We were brought up wrong in being taught to 
spend so much time on our studies ; we practiced a false economy 
in being too thrifty in our earlier years." We were too late in 
learning that opportunity, sustaining power and a stimulus 
toward success come more from a wise good-fellowship than 
from high scholarship, and that the art of being what in your 
terse western phrase is called "a good mixer" was an art well 
worth time, money and paternal advice to cultivate. It is by 
giving the technical graduate a wise start in this direction that 
he will ultimately come more often into the larger opportunity 
and higher salary of the commercial end. 

This social feature is, in the final analysis, tht chief value 
of the engineering societies. Although papers are presented in 
which one engineer so presents his experience that a hundred 
others may find each his own course more clear in attacking a 
similar problem and although one may hear presented in an 
evening hour the results of experiments and research that have 
cost a year of toil, all so summed up in a few lines of formulas 
or constants, that a repetition of this labor and expense is saved 
to all who follow, and although the master mind may publish in 
the transactions a study upon difficult and disputed points that 
will lighten labor or save mistakes to many of his fellows; yet, 

[44] 



after all, the preeminent usefulness of the Society of Engineers 
is in the bringing of men into personal relation, inspiring the 
young man by personal contact with the man who has done 
things, giving the older man a chance to size up the growing 
young men ; and, among equals it removes the bitterness to per- 
sonally know^ our successful competitor and to know that he is 
a good, honest man. 

If it be asked what suggestions can be offered to his friend 
the teacher by a practicing engineer, who for twenty-five years 
has enjoyed taking "green graduates" and trying to help them 
on their post-graduate course, I venture the following: Dwell 
on the principles of research, fill the student mind with a com- 
prehension that the school is not so much for filling his memory 
with information as for teaching the scientific method. Give 
more attention to the principles of writing reports in clear, 
exact and vigorous English, to measuring the exact meaning 
into every sentence. Teach what may be called "commer- 
cial rhetoric," bringing the result quickly into the view of the 
busy man and seeking to so arouse his interest in the opening 
paragraphs that he will continue reading instead of laying it 
aside for the leisure hours that may never come. 

Emphasize the need, in the practical world, of "getting 
there" on time. Recognize that a judicious "cramming" for ex- 
amination is legitimate and that how to do it with the least 
internal friction is a most worthy subject of instruction. In clos- 
ing business contracts and in expert work it is a much practiced 
and most useful art. Direct attention to the conditions necessary 
for obtaining a maximum output from the human machine. 
How seldom a man gives to his own body the same care that he 
would give to that of a $i,ooo horse! Long hours under stress 
in an emergency are easy if the man knows how to avoid fatigue 
through variety, and has the will power to practice what he 
knows. 

Probably there is no better way to save time and to culti- 
vate judgment than by practice in quick estimates between lim- 
its. What does that stone weigh? Not more than 6 tons, not 

[45] 



less than 4. What will that casting cost? Not less than $50, 
not more than $100. If the owner asks the cost of repairing 
the tangled smash-up of ten minutes ago, the 5^oung engineer 
can give him almost instantly an estimate that may serve his 
purpose and be correct if he states it between limits as not more 
than $10,000 and not less than $1,000; twenty- four hours later 
he may be able to state it as not more than $5,000 and not less 
than $4,000. 

Urge upon your colleagues the fact that they owe it to 
their fellow citizens and to the loyal intelligent public that 
supports the school to promptly and continually translate the 
story of the latest discovery of abstruse science down to the 
understanding of the well-educated non-technical man. 

Stimulate the interest of the students by continually bring- 
ing before them the results of the latest research and of what is 
being found out in other departments of the school. 

Recognize the fact that these four years' time with theii 
attendant expenses are too valuable to be devoted to the attain- 
ment of mere manual dexterity. This can be more cheaply 
learned in the field or workshop tlian in the school. Do not 
shrink from turning out graduates who will be strong on 
theory, while perhaps weak on practice. They can get their 
practice outside after graduation, and perhaps under the quick- 
ening influence of some short-lived ridicule by the routine w^ork- 
man, but the sound foundation of mathematics, the facility in 
handling and transforming difficult equations, the m.ental grasp 
of difficult consideration so as to state them in the language of 
mathematics and quantity, must be acquired in the Technical 
School or the chances are that they will never be acquired. 

Finally, to the many students here I can bring back no bet- 
ter word from out the years since I left similar pleasant places 
than to remind you how largely the success of a school depends 
on atmosphere and that every man has a share in forming pub- 
lic opinion, and to urge you to fill the student atmosphere with 
the warm fraternal spirit and with ideality — ideality ! — with the 
love of thoroughness, and with reverence for character. 

L46] 



ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE COL- 
LEGES OF OHIO 

BY PRESIDENT CHARLES FRANKLIN THWING OF THE WESTERN 
RESERVE UNIVERSITY 

Mr. Chairman, Mr. President , Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Fifteen years ago, Mr. President, after a service of six 
years in a neighboring college, you came to Cleveland. A lit- 
tle more than thirteen years ago I also came to Cleveland — to 
work by your side, in a sense to work with you. In this time the 
colleges of Ohio have largely changed their presidents and their 
faculties. Our near college, Oberlin, has seen Fairchild and 
Ballantine and Barrows go; Buchtel has lost her Cone; 
Baldwin her Stubbs, and others. The Ohio State University 
at Columbus misses Scott and Canfield; Denison, Purington; 
and Kenyon, Bodine and Sterling. I might continue the list, 
for apparently the days of a college president are few and — I 
will not say the other epithet, — glorious. 

I see before me presidents of some distant colleges, of 
states from Wisconsin and Missouri to New^ York and Mary- 
land, each of whom I think, with scarcely an exception, has 
come to his place since you and I, Mr. President, began to 
work together. In Ohio is only one college president who is 
older than I am, and he is now in Los Angeles, and I am afraid 
he will come back, not wearing a scholar's cap, but a bishop's 
mitre. So there is a welcome in my heart for 3^ou because of the 
continuity that belongs to me in this glorious and happy service. 
My welcome for you is a welcome based upon the well assured 
hope that by reason of proved and acceptable service in 
this place as the head of an important department you will 
continue in a yet longer service as the head of all depart- 
ments. 

My welcome is not merely one based upon time, but also 
based upon the character of the work into which you are en- 

[47] 



taring. You are the President of a School of Applied Science. 
In Ohio we have two only well equipped schools of science. 
How many colleges we have, and especially universities, I don't 
know. If you were becoming president of a new college I 
might possibly by some ingenuity find some fit word of wel- 
come, but because you are becoming president of one of the two 
well equipped schools of science in this State I have a very 
special welcome for you: for the need is of largeness in endow- 
ment of every sort in our technical schools. 

The school at Columbus and the school in Cleveland 
are to be made larger, more manifold, and more efficient in 
condition and force. There is no heart, sir, outside of your own 
and the official circle, that is more glad than mine for the great 
and noble gift of Mr. John D. Rockefeller. 

Furthermore, I wish to give you a welcome not because 
of your work and because of its hopefulness of long service, but 
also because of a relation yet more personal. The Case School 
of Applied Science and a department of Western Reserve Uni- 
versity are placed side by side, upon the same campus; an in- 
divisible and invisible line divides the common field. The op- 
portunity is as unique as it is rich for building up a combined 
course of work that shall represent the basis of the liberal 
learning and the efficiency of the technical school. Our work 
is the work of association in place. I might also say it is the 
work of association in time. Almost in the same year these 
two institutions, born of generous hearts and high purposes, came 
into being, and our reasonable hope is that for numberless cen- 
turies they are to cooperate. 

We have also a common association in the service of a 
common trusteeship. There are in this university and technical 
school three corporations. One trustee is a member of three 
boards, and many are members of two. What interests and 
profits one interests and profits the others. Furthermore, in a 
very distinct and personal way you and I, President Howe, are 
associates, having with our colleagues worked out a course 
which, in the opinion of some, represents an efficient and useful 
method for making liberally trained men efficient and efficient 

[48] 



men liberal in this connection. Because of this common as- 
sociation in work, service, and personality, I have a very hearty 
welcome. 

Yet there is a welcome that lies a bit nearer and dearer 
to one's heart; that is the welcome born of good fellowship 
and esteem. Every morning as I sit at my desk I see President 
Howe coming to his work through that beautiful campus. His 
head is lifted as if he were trying to search for those stars lost 
in the morning light. But I know his footsteps and his heart 
are bearing toward the office where he hopes to meet the boys 
and his associates. It is because of our common work as two 
men who care for each other, who are placed in the same con- 
ditions, the same environment, one of whom is a good fellow 
and the other of whom tries to be, that I have a most hearty 
welcome foi you, my dear friend, to this great opportunity. 



[49] 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

BY PRESIDENT CHARLES SUMNER HOWE 



DOES A TECHNICAL COURSE EDUCATE? 

Before we can answer the question "Does a Technical 
Course Educate?" it is necessary that we understand what edu- 
cation should mean. We do not need to trace this word back 
to its root, to find its derivation in some ancient language and 
to learn its exact meaning in that tongue, but rather to find 
what it has stood for in the thoughts of men, what processes 
have been necessary to produce it and what its value has been 
to those possessing it. If we take a brief look at some of the 
methods and ideals of education in the past we may receive 
light upon its proper meaning today. Education is for the bene- 
fit of the individual or for the benefit of the state. In Persia, 
in Egypt, in Greece, in Rome, the individual was nothing, 
the state was everything. The hopes, the desires, the wishes of 
men were not considered; the growth and prosperity of the 
state were paramount. In Persia and Sparta education was for 
war. The education of the body was for the many; the edu- 
cation of the mind for the few. Aristotle was the first to teach 
that the ultimate end of education is the ability to enjoy the 
blessings of peace. 

Society derives its ideals of education at any epoch from the 
limits of knowledge at that epoch. A man can teach only what 
he knows. If he knows but little he can teach but little; if 
the sum of human knowledge is small, there is but little to be 
taught, although there is much to learn. In the early days of 
Greece the Trivium and the Quadrivium embraced all knowl- 
edge. Grammar, rhetoric and dialectics were taught to all who 
entered the schools; arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music 
were reserved for the more advanced, who were few in number. 
The former were language studies; it was understood then as 
now that language, one's own language, is the most important 

[51] 



subject for the beginner to study. It is a significant fact that 
the Greeks studied no language but their own. In Rome, too, 
all knowledge was found in the Trivium. Having little else 
to study, the Greeks and Romans each built up a language and 
a literature which have never been surpassed, the former for its 
scientific accuracy, the latter for the beauty of its thought and 
the elegance of its diction. The sciences of the Quadrivium 
were slowly developed by the Greeks, the Romans and the 
Arabs, and in the case of geometry and music were brought to 
a high degree of perfection. But science in these early as in later 
days met with much opposition from those whose chief study 
was language or philosophy. Socrates believed that the study 
of science was profitless and wrong, "for he did not think that 
such matters were discoverable by men, nor did he believe 
that those acted dutifully towards the gods who searched into 
things that they did not wish to make known." Locke must 
have been reading Socrates when two thousand years later in 
his "Thoughts on Education" he said, "Natural philosophy as 
a speculative science, I imagine we have none, and perhaps I 
may think I have reason to say we never shall be able to make a 
science of it. The w^orks of nature are contrived by a Wisdom 
and operate by ways too far surpassing our faculties to discover 
or capacities to conceive, for us ever to be able to reduce them 
to a science." During the dark ages ignorance and superstition 
blotted out all education and all desire for education among 
European peoples, the Moors of Spain alone excepted. Some 
remnant of learning remained in the monasteries, but it was 
only enough to accentuate the intellectual darkness which en- 
veloped the nations. 

The rise of the mediaeval universities marked the revival 
of learning. In Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Prague, Vienna and 
many other cities were established great schools of the liberal 
arts, law, medicine and theolog>^ The Trivium and the Quad- 
rivium w^ere still the principal subjects studied. Learning was 
surrounded by a high wall and the only entrance to the sacred 
enclosure was through the Latin gate. All books were in Latin ; 
Latin grammar and rhetoric were first studied. Pupils slowly 

[52] 



repeated grammatical rules recited by the teacher and then 
learned by rote the works of the classic authors. Dialectics 
next received attention and pupils spent years in wrangling in 
Latin over disputed constructions in grammar or knotty points 
of law and theology. There was no vernacular literature. 
The lore of the ages had been concentrated in Greece 
and Rome and, though these countries were now shorn 
of their ancient splendor, they still dominated the world of 
learning. This was but natural, as the languages of western 
Europe were crude and unformed, while the classic tongues 
were polished and refined. Latin was the language of 
the educated ; a knowledge of it opened the door to all art, 
literature and science. It was the badge of an aristocracy, a 
secret brotherhood of learning. Those within the order had 
certain privileges not possessed by others and they looked down 
upon those outside their ranks. The education of this period 
lifted men out of the ignorance in which they had been en- 
gulfed for centuries and gave them all the knowledge of the 
world. This knowledge was centuries old it is true, but it was 
fresh and new for those who had rediscovered it. They churned 
it over and over, pressed it into new forms and expressed their 
wonder and admiration at the beauty they found in it. But as 
a rule they made no effort to improve upon it, to discover new 
truths or to impress their own thoughts upon the world. The 
student who receives all his knowledge in a foreign tongue, 
different from the language of his every-day life and thought, 
will seldom add to that knowledge. Truth reveals itself to him 
who diligently seeks it at all times and places, whose every 
thought is given to the search and whose mind is open to receive 
it even when engaged in the most commonplace affairs of life. 
A man, living in his native country, thinks in his own tongue; 
if there are no words in that tongue to express the ideas which 
come to him, they are apt to pass unheeded. 

The dawn of the Renaissance brought new factors into the 
intellectual life of Europe. The several languages settled into 
fixed forms and became more refined. Reading, writing and 
arithmetic were taught in the mother tongue and so education 

[53 ] 



spread among the common people. Scholasticism gave place to 
classic culture, and the study of history, philosophy and mathe- 
matics became more common in the universities. Latin was still 
the language of learning and the classic authors the chief source 
of culture. During the centuries which have followed, the 
changes in methods and subjects have been slow. In the past 
the teacher has been the most conservative of men. He has 
taught that which he himself learned and has followed the 
methods of his teachers. Education has been a rigid mold, a 
cast-iron form into which all were pressed and came out ex- 
actly alike. All culture and the greater part of learning were 
embalmed in the classic tongues, and these mummified forms 
were thought to be eternal and unique. But the spirit of sci- 
entific inquiry has shattered the mold and one subject after an- 
other has been added to the curriculum of the university. Men 
have come to see that language is a means and not an end ; that 
the true subject for study is not grammar, but the universe. 
It has taken many centuries to show that education is many- 
sided and of many forms. Until within a few years the curri- 
culum at each college has been fixed — so much language, so 
much mathematics, so much philosophy, so much or rather so 
little science. The student who had no taste for mathematics 
was forced to do as much as the one whose taste was for formu- 
las and numbers ; he who disliked language must cram Latin and 
Greek for years or he could not be called an educated man. 
But new ideas and new methods have come within the last half 
century. It has come to be recognized, the advocates of the 
new method say, that all men are not alike, that what is suit- 
able to develop the mind of one will not answer for another. 
Individual tastes and capacities have been at last respected, and 
no student is now forced to try to become a linguist or a mathe- 
matician or a philosopher or a scientist or a weak combination of 
them all against his wishes. The educational pendulum has 
swung from the conservative to the radical side and now the 
student may decide to specialize in chemistry, or logic, or Anglo- 
Saxon before he knows what these terms mean. In some re- 
spects we have reverted to the methods of the mediaeval uni- 

[54] 



versities, for now as then a student may graduate without much 
knowledge of his mother tongue. 

Which of the methods so hastily mentioned has produced 
true education and which results shall we use to settle the ques- 
tion under discussion? Is the true method that of the Chinese 
which taught a worship of ancestors and a reverence for an- 
tiquity; or that of Persia and Sparta which prepared men for 
war; or that of Athens, which in the words of Milton "taught 
men to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the of- 
fices, both public and private of peace and war;" or that of 
ancient Greece and Rome which developed an almost perfect 
language and literature and produced an art and philosophy 
which have been the admiration of the ages; or that of the 
mediseval universities which revived a part of the old learning 
but added nothing new ; or that of the centuries succeeding the 
Renaissance which laid chief stress upon classic culture but de- 
veloped a vernacular literature and gave birth to the sciences ; 
or that of the present with its tendency to absolute freedom in 
the choice of studies? Among this diversity of methods and 
results it is difficult to select a criterion by which to settle our 
question. Many definitions of an educated man have been 
given, but among them all I know of none that will appeal 
to a scientific mind like that of Huxley. He says "That man, 
I think, has a liberal education, whose body has been so trained 
in youth that it is the ready servant of his will, and does with 
ease and pleasure all that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; 
whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of 
equal strength and in smooth running order, ready, like a steam 
engine, to be turned to any kind of work and to spin the gos- 
samers as well as forge the anchors of the mind ; whose mind 
is stored with the knowledge of the great fundamental truths 
of nature and the laws of her operations ; one who, no stunted 
ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions have been 
trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a ten- 
der conscience ; one ■\\-ho has learned to love all beauty, whether 
of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to esteem others as 
himself." 

[55] 



without attempting to rival this and other definitions, I 
may say that considering the subject from an Intellectual stand- 
point only, if we are to train educated men I believe we must 
teach our students to know, to search, to think. To know — 
what? That is the question which our Institutions of learning 
have been trying for many centuries to solve. When all knowl- 
edge was embraced in the Trivium, the problem was easy. He 
who mastered the Trivium was educated. Now the very ex- 
tent of knowledge makes the problem difficult. The chemist, 
the mathematician, the botanist, the philologist each declares 
that unless a man knows something of his specialty he Is not 
broadly educated. Enough is known in mathematics to keep a 
student busy for his entire life, and the same is true of all other 
branches of learning. The poor student is urged by one teacher 
and conditioned by another, Is given lessons by each long enough 
to consume all of his study hours, and wonders why he is obliged 
to try to master things he does not like; or turned loose to 
browse as he pleases, seeks too often the easiest paths and gains 
but one side of an education. No man can know all there is to 
know. However great his attainments, however broad his sym- 
pathies, however brilliant his intellect, he can only prospect a 
little on the mountain of knowledge. Is it necessary to know 
all? Are there not some things, a knowledge of which is neces- 
sary in education and others which can be left to the Individual 
taste? I believe that In the future all colleges will answer this 
question, as some have already done, in the affirmative. Those 
which still adhere to the required curriculum must permit a 
certain amount of natural selection, while those which offer al- 
most absolute freedom In choice of studies must place more re- 
strictions upon youthful tastes. And what are these necessary 
subjects which all should master? First and foremost is one's 
own langauge. The ability to speak and write the mother 
tongue should be insisted upon in every scheme of education. 
It Is evident that the secondary schools cannot complete this 
work. The entrance examination papers in every college show 
that the students know very little about rhetoric and composi- 
tion. It Is a slow process to teach a student to express himself 

[56] 



clearly, concisely, elegantly. Cato said, "Get a firm grip on the 
matter and words will follow fast enough." This may have 
been true two thousand years ago, but either it is not true today 
or our students do not conform to the condition. The English 
language should be studied from the time the student enters col- 
lege until he leaves if he is to be master of his own tongue. 
Modern languages, two at least, should also be insisted upon. 
Knowledge is not circumscribed by boundary lines nor learning 
located by latitude and longitude. No one country, no one lan- 
guage contains all that the educated man should know. The 
study of literature will naturally be coincident with the study of 
language. The great thoughts of some of the great men of all 
ages should be known and understood. The range of reading 
should be wide, the critical study of style and content be con- 
fined to a few authors. History should be included in the list 
of necessary subjects. The history of one's own country should 
be well known ; the history of other countries restricted to the 
most important events. Most of our college students have not 
studied American history since they were in the grammar 
schools and few if any of our colleges make it a required part of 
the curriculum. Can any knowledge be more important to the 
educated man than the history of his own country, and is the 
amount acquired in the grammar school before he is fourteen 
years old sufficient? History should not be confined to great 
events or to the manners and customs of the people, but should 
include past and present politics. Many years ago there was 
inscribed upon the walls of the historical rooms of Johns Hop- 
kins University the words of Freeman, "History is past politics; 
politics is present history." Past and present political parties, 
the principles they have or do stand for, the success or failure 
of their policies and their effect upon the welfare of nations 
may well be required. The study of civil government is closely 
allied to the preceding. Very few of our college students can 
describe the government of the cities in which they live or tell 
the names and functions of the several courts of justice in their 
native states. Economics, though not a required study in most 
of our colleges, is one with which all should be familiar. The 

[57 ] 



functions of land, labor and capital, the relations of labor and 
capital, the nature of supply and demand, money, production, 
distribution, wages, rent, taxation, tariff should all be under- 
stood. Philosophy and Ethics should, I think, receive a small 
amount of the time devoted to required studies. Nor can a man 
be called educated unless he knows something about Art. The 
several schools of painting and sculpture, the great paintings, the 
great statues, the masterpieces of architecture should all be 
familiar to the student. Chemistry and Physics have made the 
wealth of our modern world, have revolutionized our mode of 
living, have dictated the policy of nations and have changed 
the course of histor5\ Yet how few of our institutions of higher 
learning require either of them except as entrance subjects? 
There is very little in mathematics which is necessary for the 
educated man to know. Arithmetic, algebra and geometry are 
required in the secondary schools and from the standpoint of 
knowledge nothing else need be required. Botany and astron- 
omy are likewise necessary. The educated man moves among 
the trees, the plants, the flowers by day and sees above him the 
planets and constellations by night. No more than in the days 
of Job may he bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose 
the bands of Orion, but he should know the north star when he 
sees it and be able to tell why the Copernican theory is true. 

Am I requiring the educated, the broadly educated man to 
know too much? He can learn something of all these subjects 
during his college course and yet have a great deal of time left 
to follow his own individual tastes. The standard by which to 
judge the technical course, to ascertain its deficiencies, must be 
broad. In these days of telephones, electric cars, X-rays and 
the wireless telegraph ought we to call a man educated if he 
has not given considerable time to the study of Physics ? Ought 
we to call a man educated if he does not know the history of 
the great political parties and our methods of government? 
Ought w^e to call a man educated if he m.oves among the phe- 
nomena of nature by day and by night with no more knowledge 
of them than if he were blind? And yet we are graduating 
from our colleges many men who know little or nothing of any 

[ 58 1 



of these subjects and we do call these men educated. The edu- 
cated man is to live in his own generation ; he is a citizen of 
today, not of yesterday or tomorrow, and he should know those 
things which will fit him for the business, social and political 
life of his own time. 

To search. However much a man may know, there is yet 
more to be known. It is not necessary for the educated man to 
know everything, but it is necessary for him to be able to find 
anything in the realm of knowledge. He should be taught 
how to use indexes, dictionaries, encyclopedias and other books 
of reference; libraries, art galleries and museums should open 
their stores to him when he bids them. Everyone knows how to 
look up a word in a dictionary or an article in an encyclopedia, 
but the systematic use of all sources of information is rarely 
taught. The student has not been fully initiated into the mys- 
teries of his order until he has been taught to search. Then 
the freedom of the scholar is his and the universe lays its treas- 
ures at his feet. 

To think. The most important and the most difficult! 
Man may be by nature a thinking animal, but if so, he does his 
utmost to conceal his powers. The faculty of original thought 
never comes to most men. In childhood we must accept what 
is told us and we become so accustomed to receiving our ideas 
from others that many of us never outgrow it. We believe 
without question what we read in books, magazines and news- 
papers, what we hear in the class room and from the pulpit and 
platform. But the broadly educated man must think for him- 
self. The mind, like the body, should be put through certain 
exercises to gain strength. Mathematics and the ancient lan- 
guages, which have been omitted from the list of things the 
educated man should know, are among the most powerful in- 
fluences for training the mind. This is why they have held 
such an important place in the curricula of our colleges. But 
they are not the only subjects which will stimulate mental 
thought and teach the mind self-reliance. A man may grow 
strong by rowing, by using chest weights or by chopping wood. 
Any one of these will stimulate the nervous system, send the 

L59 J 



blood to all parts of the body and keep every muscle in a healthy 
condition. The proper study of chemistry or philosophy or 
thermo-dynamics will have a like efiEect upon the mind. But 
there are many m-uscles in the body; if a man uses his biceps 
only, he will not grow strong in the legs. And there are many 
powers of the mind. If the intellect is to have all its powers 
of equal strength, as Huxley advises, the man must be taught 
to think in more than one direction. He must study language, 
mathematics, science, philosophy, not for knowledge only, but 
for discipline. 

H these requirements, which, I confess, have a large per- 
sonal equation, are necessary to produce education, does a tech- 
nical course educate? Perhaps it would be proper first to in- 
quire : Do our colleges and universities educate ? Do they teach 
their students to know, to search, to think? Have they not 
gone too far in the direction of allowing any man to study 
anything? But it is the technical school and not the college 
which is under discussion. The technical school is a profes- 
sional school and its duty is to train its students for active 
professional life. It is not a university nor a college. Its aims 
and its methods are different from either. Its business is to 
teach, and if it does not teach, it has no excuse for existence. In 
a university, the faculty are expected to do little teaching and 
much research work; in a technical school they are expected to 
do much teaching and little research work. Research and 
expert work are advisable to a limited extent — limited, how- 
ever, only by the time and strength the instructor has left after 
his regular work is done. They should be encouraged by the 
authorities in everj^ possible way under the above restrictions. 
Research work is the legitimate outcome of learning to think. 
He who possesses the power will find waj^s and means to use it. 
Coal burned in our furnaces yields but a fraction of its energy 
in useful work; the sun's rays shining upon the roofs of our 
manufactories have stored up energy enough to light and heat 
the buildings and to operate all the machinery within, but we 
use none of it. Surely there is opportunity for original work 
by the engineer. The community has a right to demand that 

L 60] 



the professor in a technical school shall do expert work. The 
knowledge he possesses, the laboratories and apparatus at his 
command, should be for the use of the community whenever this 
will not interfere with his first duty as a teacher. 

Engineering is a learned profession. Schools of law, medi- 
cine and theology do not attempt to give a broad education. 
They either require a liberal training for admission or they 
admit students from the secondary schools. In both cases the 
course of study is the same. The engineering student usually 
comes directly from the secondary school. It would be possible 
to give him drawing and shopwork at once, to furnish him with 
tables and empirical formulas and have him begin technical 
work immediately. But this would make him a mere machine 
and not an educated engineer. The technical schools recognize 
that they are training for a learned profession and require the 
students to give the greater part of their time for two years 
to liberal studies. The purpose of the Roman schools was 
utilitarian, but they furnished a sound training. The purpose 
of the technical schools is likewise utilitarian, but they give a 
broad and liberal education as far as they go. English is 
thoroughly taught during the tim.e devoted to it. The training 
in modern language is good, although its chief aim is to teach 
the students to read scientific books and periodicals. Mathe- 
matics is thoroughly taught; it has to be, for it is the basis of 
all engineering work. Physics and Chemistry are required 
to a greater extent than in any college. Economics is required 
in some and offered as an elective in many others. The tech- 
nical student is taught to search. Books of reference, periodical 
literature, proceedings of societies and government reports are 
made a part of his education. And an effort Is made to teach 
him to think. The connection between theory and practice 
can be learned only by vigorous mental effort. It is only by 
right thinking along scientific and mathematical lines that the 
student learns to transform a theorem into a dynamo or a 
formula into a compound engine. 

And thus I am led to the conclusion that a technical 
course does educate to a limited extent. It teaches the student 

[61 ] 



to search and it teaches him to think; it teaches him some of 
the things that an educated man should know, but it does not 
teach him all that an educated man should know. It would 
be much better if our technical graduates were broadly educated 
men as well as trained engineers, if they had received a college 
training before entering upon a technical course. In a univer- 
sity it would be easy to require this. Two courses would be 
open to the student. He could complete his college work with 
no reference to technical subjects and then enter the engineering 
department; or after completing those subjects which are con- 
sidered necessary for a liberal training, he could choose a part or 
the whole of his electives in the technical school. In the 
former case his combined college and professional course would 
require six or seven years; in the latter case five or six years. 
Some of our universities have such a requirement and I am glad 
they do. I believe the student should be trained to know, to 
search, to think before he enters the technical school. During 
his whole life he would have a broader outlook, a deeper sym- 
pathy with men and events, a greater influence upon the com- 
munity. I am not sure that he would be a better engineer. 

But however desirable such a combined course may be, it is 
not possible at present to make the whole or a part of a college 
education a requisite for admission to the technical schools. 
In 1902 there were graduated about 1,600 engineers; there was 
a demand for about 4,000. If a college diploma were required 
for admission, the number of graduates would not be more 
than a quarter as large as now. Even if it were possible to make 
such a requirement, I do not think it would be wise to do so. 
Whatever may be our opinion in regard to the best course of 
study, we must take into account the wishes of the student, and 
the average technical student does not wish to go to college. 
He thinks the course of study too long and too expensive. 
He would be forced to give up all hope of an education if six or 
seven years were necessar\^ to obtain it. A man's first duty is 
to make a living for himself and for those dependent upon him. 
The average boy — your boy and mine — has his own way to 
make in the world. He will be given an education, but after 

[62] 



that he must take care of himself. The technical course, if 
understood, is wonderfully attractive to the boy. The Talmud 
says, "the end of learning is doing;" the end of a technical 
course is doing, and the average boy wants to do something. He 
knows he can make a living as soon as he graduates. It is not 
strange that he wishes to begin this work as early as possible and 
to finish it as soon as consistent with thorough preparation for 
professional duties. 

In conclusion I would say that the technical school has 
three great duties to perform in education. 

First: To maintain a high standard in its professional 
teaching. It was created to do this work. Technical training 
is education of a high order although not liberal. The mistakes 
of the engineer are destructive to property and sometimes to 
human life ; hence the standard of teaching should be high. 

Second : To see that it does not degenerate into a trade 
school. The student will go into practical work when he grad- 
uates and so there is a tendency to give him more and more 
practical work in the school. There is no objection to this, pro- 
vided it does not interfere with the broader studies already 
described. If the liberal studies usually given are dropped, the 
technical school will become a mere shop or drafting room. 

Third and last: To encourage those young men who are 
planning to enter technical work to first obtain a broad and 
liberal training to the end that they may be better citizens and 
wield a greater influence in society, the community and the 
state. 



[63] 



I 



t 



-'v■^'t'■^:^^rv.^ ■■' 



^■i . 



- v^> 







f'»^ ',•»*' .',,,'1.1 










